Waking
by Raeni12345
Summary: It's morning, the day that Alice will fall into Wonderland, and everyone is waking from some rather unsettling dreams. Drabble-ish. I will add more as they come to me.


**AN: Just some dream drabbles that came to me as I was working on my other stories. Trying to get new chapters up for those as well, after a couple of weeks of painful writer's block. Enjoy.  
**

...

**HATTER**

Tea. He needed tea.

Something strong. And piping hot.

His hands shook as he filled the kettle and set it on the stove top. His whole body felt ice-cold, despite the comfortable warmth of the room.

It had been a particularly bad nightmare, his third this week. But even as he tried to recall it, he found the details starting to slip from his memory, though the chill it left refused to dissipate.

But he knew who it was about. Who it was always about.

He thought his nightmares - both the sleeping and the waking - would be over the day that Mad March was beheaded. But in the two weeks since, he realized that in the absence of the daytime fears, the nighttime terrors had only increased.

March had come alive again, pursuing him endlessly. But something was different. Try as he might, he couldn't see March's face. Even when March was standing over him, knife poised. Even when his right fist made contact, shattering March's head like it was made of glass.

And he could have sworn he still saw the blood on his hand, a full minute after waking.

He took a large gulp of tea, almost relishing the burn as the too-hot liquid coursed painfully down his throat. But it was doing what he needed it to. Warming him up. Bringing him back from the brink once again.

Real tea was hard to come by, and getting harder all the time. And it was costly. He usually bartered four or five bottles of his best emotion teas for a single pound of the real thing. It was his elixir, the one thing that could sooth and warm him on nights like this.

It wasn't that he didn't have other options. His windowsill was lined with bottles filled with colorful liquids, and labels like calm and serenity and peace. Clear conscience, the newest emotion, was to be introduced to the masses of addicts that would await the opening of his shop to get their next emotional fix. He had a bottle of that on his sill as well.

Sometimes, it tempted him. An escape from it all, however momentary. But he knew he would never touch it. Couldn't touch it.

If March hadn't touched it, maybe the past twenty-five years would have been far different.

He took a deep shuddering breath, and another searing gulp.

…

**CAROL**

She woke up, a breath away from screaming Alice's name out loud. Her heart felt like it would pound out of her chest, and she was shaking so badly that it was causing her bed to squeak.

"Just a dream," she chastised herself, when her mind and body refused to calm down. Just a dream, but a troubling one, a recurring theme, but one that hadn't played out in her sleep for over a year. She thought she was past it.

Back in the little yellow farmhouse. All alone. Trying to find her daughter. But Alice was gone, vanished without a trace, just like Robert. Running through the house, calling for Alice. But never an answer, never a trace. Just that tattered copy of Alice in Wonderland, lying open on her bed. The same book that had been found, lying on the floor of Robert's study.

Still trembling, she thrust her covers aside, and swung her feet down onto the cold wooden floor. She needed to see, needed to make sure.

She moved down the hallway, and placed her hand on the knob of her daughter's bedroom door. With practiced stealth, she pushed the door, just wide enough to see the rise of the covers, the mass of dark tousled hair on the pillow. She stood there for a long moment, watching her daughter sleep. Then breathing a sigh of relief, her heart-rate finally starting to slow, she closed the door with an almost inaudible click, and made her way down the hall toward the kitchen.

It was still the middle of the night, but she had no intention of going back to sleep. Good strong coffee was definitely in order.

…

**ALICE**

The floor fell out from under her, and she was falling, faster and faster.

She jolted hard on her bed, then lay there paralyzed, for a moment too overwhelmed by terror to even cry out. She couldn't breathe, and her heart was pounding so hard and painfully that she was sure it would break her ribcage. It took a long moment for the dream to melt away, another long moment for her body to regain control.

Then the tears came, and she turned into her pillow to muffle the sobs of agony. The dream had been a familiar one - she had been plagued with similar since she was ten – but it never seemed to get less painful.

She had been in a room, and her dad was there. There, and looking right at her, but something was wrong. She could see it in his eyes. He didn't know who she was. He had just gazed blankly at her for a long moment, then turned and started walking away. She had screamed for him, cried out for her daddy. But he couldn't hear her. He just kept walking. When she had tried to follow him, she had hit an invisible barrier. At the door, he had turned and looked back at her, but it was with the same blank expression. Then the floor had fallen out from beneath her.

Daddy. She was at her computer before she even realized she was out of her bed. The Parent Finder site popped up immediately – she never closed the program. Four new profiles. Three from Whitsunday, Australia. One from Motueka, New Zealand. She briefly scanned through the pictures, before heaving a sigh and adding two new pins to the map.

Of all the methods and agencies she had used to try to locate her father, Parent Finder had given her the most responses. But she had to wonder, sometimes, if they used the information she had given them at all. The men's profiles that they sent her were all approximately the right age, all about the same height, all with brown or graying hair. But that was where any similarity to her father stopped. And if that was all they were going by, there were literally millions of men who matched that description.

Restless frustration filled her body. It was only four in the morning, but she had no intention of going back to sleep. She threw on a pair of jeans and a hoodie, grabbed her gym bag and fresh gi, and quietly opened her bedroom door. Now that she was an instructor, she had a key to the dojo. And a workout was just what she needed.

The smell of fresh brewed coffee instantly met her nose, and she could see the light was on in the kitchen. She stifled a groan, and crept down the hallway, hoping that her mother wouldn't hear her.

…

**AN: Thank goodness for bad dreams and the unsettled mornings following. I woke up two days ago from a disturbing dream that I couldn't quite remember the details of, but it was tea that warmed me and made the unsettled feeling melt away. And voila, Hatter's waking was born. The others followed.**

**There will likely, eventually, be a dream drabble for each of the main characters and some of the minor ones... let me know what you think. Please review! :):):)  
**


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